A World Within These Walls
by wikiaddicted723
Summary: He'd follow Olivia Dunham into raging fires, crumbling worlds and supernovas; it's something that comes as second nature, without condition, without preamble – and, apparently, without any sort of time – space distinction between her versions.


A/N: I have no idea where this came from. Just remember to comment if you like it. And also if you don't, all feedback is good.

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><p>"How long 'til they realize we're missing, you think?"<p>

His voice is hoarse in the dark, his throat sore from the force of his screaming, a quiet rasp that grates against her skin and echoes in the empty spaces between her bones. He's not concerned with getting an answer. For Peter, it's already too late anyway.

Olivia raises her eyes and looks in his direction from the corner she's chosen to claim as her own, the joining of the two walls at her back comforting, like a lullaby whose words she can't seem to get right, or a half – remembered dream that comes back night after night. The lighting is dim; the muted luminescence of the single light bulb hanging from the low ceiling just enough that she can trace his shape, shivering as he slumps gracelessly against the metallic door that would have made their only means of escape from the basement, had it led to someplace else besides the brick wall behind it.

He'd theorized briefly – Peter – on what might once have lain behind the door, before they'd sealed it. She doesn't think such things matter much, with the whole building rigged to collapse on top of them at some point later tonight. Any time now, really.

"Why did you come after me?" she counters, puzzled, worried at the spasmodic shaking of his limbs, and the sheen of sweat on his brow and the slowing pace of his breathing, deflecting his questions with her own.

Her voice is equally as damaged, tinged with an echo of defeat that Peter has never once heard before this moment, before this place, before this whole damned timeline. He shakes his head, trying to dispel the heavy fog that threatens to drown out his mind, and the very motion makes him dizzy. He can smell the faint stench of his own blood in the air, as it continues to trickle sluggishly from the bullet hole on his thigh, the pressure of his leather belt, wrapped hastily above the wound in an improvised tourniquet, the only thing preventing him from bleeding out in a matter of minutes.

"Habit," he says grimly, "it's what I do." It's part of who he is.

He'd follow Olivia Dunham into raging fires, crumbling worlds and supernovas; it's something that comes as second nature, without condition, without preamble – and, apparently, without any sort of time – space distinction between versions of the woman doing the leading.

Peter forgets, at times, that she's not the woman he's spent the last four years of his life with (or is it fifteen? Sometimes he can't quite remember). She moves the same, and talks the same, and thinks the same, but that's not really it. He's made that mistake once before. It's the way she looks at him at the end of the day, when the chase is done and the suspects are caught and the world is right once more – until the next madman comes along. The way the shadows dancing in the back of her eyes soften and call to him, and she smiles with a compliment meant to reassure him.

It's painful, after. Painful to hold on to his memories and fight against this want in him, to reach out and never let her go. It's painful, and so he seeks to distance himself, with a frosty demeanor and indifferent masks.

He doesn't feel any pain now; he feels only the cold and the nausea and the burning of his leg. Inside, though… inside he's a miasma of regret and shame and anger at whichever form of higher power it was that decided it would be fun to fuck his life up and take her from him.

He won't be going home after all. He'll never see her again, even though she's right in front of him.

He shivers. The world shifts before his eyes, as if he's skidding sideways on ice, and everything goes blurry. His head hits the ground.

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><p>Olivia sees him fall in slow motion, like a rag doll that topples over with a particularly strong gust of wind, and it seems to her like the universe – at least the one within these four dirty walls they're trapped inside – stops.<p>

She jumps to her feet, ignoring the protest of her injured hip at the suddenness of the motion, her heart beating somewhere a lot nearer to the back of her throat than it should be. She kneels in front of him, off to the side, mindful of his injured leg as she hauls him upright by the shoulders, feeling the fevered heat – and – shiver of his skin beneath her palms as she shakes him into wakefulness, calling his name (a name that feels more familiar on her tongue than it has any right to be).

"Peter! Peter, don't you _dare _do this to me, wake up!" she hisses in his ear, the early tendrils of panic flaring to life in chest, feeling his skin as it scorches her lips at a distance. His head lulls forward into her shoulder and his eyelids flutter, his muscles twitching.

Olivia slaps him, hard, and when he fails to respond she slaps him again.

"What'd I do?" he slurs then, raising a hand in a clumsy attempt at self – defense, his eyes half – open and his cheeks red, sweat and dirt clinging to his skin, and Olivia fights the urge to laugh in sheer relief.

"You scared me," she admits with a breath, holding him still, feeling his hands fisting loosely on the back of her shirt as he leans his forehead on the space between her shoulder and neck. It's not something he'd do on his right mind, without a bleeding wound that drains the life out of him or a fever that slows down his brain and his thinking. Olivia likes it; somehow, this knowledge surprises her.

She likes the feel of his hands on her, around her, likes the rush of his breath on the cooling sweat of her neck and the feel of his hair between her fingers as she cradles his head. She's not meant for this, or for him, but she likes it.

"I'm sorry" he manages, barely awake, sounding drunk, feeling drunk. His head pounds and his leg aches, and his foot is numb, but Peter is drunk on her, and her closeness.

"S'okay," she says, "just don't do it again."

"…I never told you," he says in the softest of whispers, after a brief moment of silence, of his breathing, and hers. She looks down at him strange, wondering.

"Never told me what?"

"That – that I loved you, too" Olivia knows he doesn't mean her, not really. That does not stop her from holding her breath, from tightening her hands on his shoulders or screwing her eyes shut against the onslaught of his pain as she hides her face on his hair, his words squeezing tight around her windpipe, stabbing at places aching and unused in her chest. He's looking for something that she can't give him, something she's not sure she has anymore, if ever.

"I knew, Peter…I knew" She doesn't bother to correct person, or tense. She leaves it at that, and wonders for a second what it would feel like to be meant for those words, for his hands and his eyes.

She feels the wetness of his tears on the fabric of her shirt, and holds him tighter, brushing the offending droplets away with gentle thumbs and the murmur of disconnected reassurance that she drops in his ear.

The rescue team finds them, hours later, his shivering shape still in her arms. He'll live, and she'll live. And she'll hope against hope that he never remembers, neither his words nor the strength of his embrace, for both their sanities.

He'll get home, someday, of that she has no doubt. He'll get home, and she'll keep going forward like she always has done, alone. But somewhere, in a place where luck's on her side and happy endings are norm, she'll have him.


End file.
